Dave Kruger wrote: >Chuck's Minnesota climate is colder than a witch's whatnot, but at least it's dry! Even in the frozen woods of Minnesota, we have to be a bit wary of using tarps without caution. In January of 1975, I was doing a ski traverse with two others of the then-abandoned Kekekabic Trail through the heart of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. On the second day of the trip- in what was later called by the media "the Blizzard of the Century"- a record deep low pressure system of hurricane intensity brought warm, moist air from the Gulf over the region, and where we were, the temperature rose to 33 F (1 deg.C) for about 12 hours and almost two inches of rain fell overnight. Our skis, ski boots, and portions of our down bags got wet and coated with ice. With the wind howling as the storm moved on, sucking cold Canadian air south, the temperature was 25 F (-4 C) at daybreak, about zero F (-18 C) at noon, and -10 F (-23 C) at sunset at 4pm. Our frozen ski boots broke most of our three-pin ski bindings, and we forged on by lashing our boots to the skis like snowshoes. Going was slow as the ice crust on the snow caused our ski tails to bust through while supporting the ski tips. It got down to -22 F (-30 C) that next night and never got back above zero F for the rest of the five remaining days. For several days we made only three miles a day, and we slowly thawed out the bags by campfire at night. So it is wise to expect the unexpected and be prepared for the worst when playing on the edges of adventure. On that and on several other winter trips, I found the useful range of a good winter down bag without a vapor barrier to be about a week before hopelessly loosing loft to internal frost. Synthetic-fill bags will not fare much better, but are a bit easier to beat some loft back into. On another beat-your-head-against-a-brick-wall type of trip, a seven-day tour along the Hudson Bay coast out of Churchill, Manitoba, in February 1976, I was using an early Polarguard prototype winter bag from SnowLion with a down liner bag. The high temp for the week trip was -17 F (-25 C) and the low was -45 F (-43 C)- a warm spell to the local Churchillians. At the end of that trip, which included a stay in an igloo we built, both the down liner and the Polarguard bags were pretty much frozen basketballs on the cargo sled. I experimented with vapor barrier liners a bit after that, but they take some getting used to, both from the dampness sensation issue and the getting all tangled up inside your bag problem. Some time after that, Will Steger, an old friend, had similar freeze-up problems with synthetic-fill bags on some of his Arctic expeditions, and he was in the store where I work investigating the vapor barrier idea, but I don't know what technique he is currently using. To provide this thread with a tenuous connection to paddlesports, I still hope to do a winter camping trip by kayak on Lake Superior if conditions mesh some time with snow and open water. Otherwise, it's my bi-annual trip to the Everglades for winter in the mangroves. (And tarps still won't quite make it.) -Andy Knapp Minneapolis No winter yet, after the warmest November on record in the upper Midwest. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:06 PDT